The invention relates to a balance with one or several weighing cells with a total of at least eight wire strain gauges, four of which are expanded under load and four compressed under load. The eight wire strain gauges are connected together circularly in series so as to form a single Wheatstone bridge. The Wheatstone bridge is supplied with voltage along a diagonal (vertical diagonal) and the output signal is taken off along the other diagonal (horizontal diagonal).
Balances of this type are known, e.g. from EP 0,101,247. If the load is placed at different positions of the load platform in balances of this type, that is, if the individual weighing cells are loaded differently, small differences in the balance display result if the different weighing cells do not have the exact same sensitivity. In the known balance these deviations, the so-called corner-load errors, are compensated by adjustable resistors parallel to the wire strain gauges or in series with the wire strain gauges. However, the calculation of these adjustable resistors is complicated. There is furthermore the danger that as a result of different temperature coefficients of the adjustable resistors and of the wire strain gauges the adjusting of the corner load no longer agrees upon changes in temperature. In addition, the adjustable resistors and the wire strain gauges can take on different temperatures on account of different power losses and different heat dissipation, which produces errors even given the same temperature coefficients of the adjustable resistors and of the wire strain gauges. The same applies if the adjustable resistors and the wire strain gauges age differently.